The Wall Street Journal has a great editorial today highlighting how much our spending trend has changed since the Democrats took over Congress in 2008. The CBO projections for spending over ten years have increase by $4.4 trillion. But I found these statistics particularly interesting:
The annual average increase in domestic, nondefense discretionary spending-on the likes of education, food stamps, and things other than Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security-was 6.4% from 1999-2008. Yet in 2009, nondefense discretionary spending rose by 11.2%, and in 2010 it will grow by another 14.7%. Much of this increase has been added directly to the CBO baseline, compounding future spending levels as far as the green-eyeshade can see.
It is shocking that the rate of increase of nondefense discretionary spending has effectively doubled in recent years. Yet it should also be shocking that the rate of growth was 6.4 percent from 1999-2008. That’s reckless spending that occurred, for the most part, under a Republican President and Congress.
It certainly worth pointing out just how much more profligate the Democrat-control Congress has been, but voters should also be aware of just how badly the GOP has slipped up in the past so they pressure GOP representatives to make good on the promise of better fiscal stewardship in the future.